What Happens When God is Nature?

[The_Flying_Skeptic]

Bolded because you are right. Also, if they believe that 'God' is more than 'nature'... yet still responsible for nature:

it is still true that 'God' works with 'natural' mechanisms In these cases, much of the 'work of God' would be completely indistinguishable from 'nature'.

Both the atheist in the first story and the man who had faith in God failed to recognize that the natural events they observed were the result of God's actions.

Good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to Good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Last but not least, good things happen to bad people. The fact that good things happen to bad people and I don't mean 'life changing good things' I mean 'Wow, the cops didn't make it on time!" or "They never found the body!" or "I guess nobody cared about the body after all." makes your view of a deity that works by natural means meaningless. Like i said towards the end of another post http://atheistforums.org/thread-3842-pos...l#pid73544 : your logic is based on a poor understanding of probability: the idea that there is 'good luck' and that favorable probability must be caused by a deity is pareidolia. see http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html In the end, you make no distinction between what is caused by your deity or a deity (since you may blame satan for unfavorable probability as well) and what is caused by nature alone.

As in your first example, if the x didn't kill you, you wouldn't hesitate to thank your deity rather than find out why x didn't kill you but even if you did find out there was a natural explanation you'd still say that 'god done it'... Your definition of your deity's behavior is not useful if it cannot be distinguished from nature.